Republicans talk fraud, but file on basis that race was too close to call. An astute friend passed this on today:

The Republicans, the Building Industry Association of Washington and right-wing talk show hosts are trying to whip Republicans into a lather about fraud for a re-vote, but when they got into court they filed on the basis that the race was too close to call.

"If they had a real smoking gun they would have rolled it out today," state Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt said. He accused Republicans of "judge shopping" by filing the action in one of the state's most Republican counties.

The GOP's court allegations fail to list any fraud, a clear indication the GOP lacks the kind of case it once claimed it would pursue, Berendt said.

Soros group raises stakes in battle with US neo-cons

Good news for progressives!

A group of billionaire philanthropists are to donate tens of millions more dollars to develop progressive political ideas in the US in an effort to counter the conservative ascendancy.

At a meeting in San Francisco last month, the left-leaning billionaires agreed to commit an even larger sum over a longer period to building institutions to foster progressive ideas and people.

The intention is to provide the left with organisations in Washington that can match the heft of the rightwing think-tanks such as Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. At a state level, the aim is to build what one person called a “deeper progressive bench”.

Leftwing policy experts have already got wind of the new funds. One former aide to Mr Kerry said there had been talks with the Center for American Progress about making permanent the network of foreign policy experts established by Democrats in the 2004 campaign. He said he had been told: “Money is not a problem.”

Politics Gets a Tune-Up

A new website devoted to helping us frame the issues. Great resource so far on social security.

What is this revote up to?

Clark County Republican Chairman Brent Boger, meanwhile, urged the protesters on.

"Thank you for standing up for democracy," he told the group. "Together, we will have another election in the spring."

re-vote -- what Republicans propose after losing a close gubernatorial election in order to drum up sympathy for their candidate so he can have more name recognition for the upcoming senatorial race. An indication of what the Republicans would have done had Kerry pulled won the presidential election. Why is it that the Democrats didn't have a plan for what to do if Kerry lost?

From a friend -- I couldn't say it any better...

I would not be filling up your email with this if I did not believe that we are facing a crisis. Let me know if you would rather I did not send such things.

It is time to stand up and say "Enough!"

The United States government has been slowly drifting into a totalitarian regime. Several trends are apparent, but one has gone so far now as to place us on the brink of falling into a chasm from which we will be unable to escape through the democratic process. We must stop this process now!

As reported in the Washington Post,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41475-2005Jan1.html
the administration is moving to implement wide spread imprisonment of citizens who will have no recourse to the courts. We have already seen this being done on a large scale with "terrorists" who were supposedly picked up in combat situations. Now it will be enlarged to any person who the government defines as a "terrorist." This is a necessary step that every modern totalitarian regime has taken. It is a total undermining of the Bill of Rights. If we do not say "No" now, we will be seen by history in the same light as those citizens of Russia, Germany, Italy and elsewhere who did not act when the pattern became obvious.

This is not a partisan issue any longer. Congress on both sides of the aisle must act. Every citizen who values democracy and our inalienable rights must stand up to call on Congress and the media to stop this process.

Ballot counter in Seattle tells all

This article talks about the practice and accuracy of the hand recount in Seattle. It mirrors Clark County -- except the rules for turning ballots over to the Canvassing Board and keeping talking to a minimum were in place from the first. In our area the Republican observers came in with printouts of a Power Point presentation. The first day of counting went pretty normally -- and both sides kept track of the totals and any changes. By the second day the Republicans weren't keeping track of the changes, but were now all too concerned with chads. The Republican boss, on first name basis with "Greg," warned her observers over and over again about chads on the floor, pointing out little bits of paper. Each day it was clear that the Republican observers had a message du jour that came down from the top somewhere.

The counters themselves were amenable and most were accurate. The procedure itself kept them accurate. One table with inaccurate counters was split up and then observed closely by election officials. I would guess that most of the votes from that group were recounted.

It was eerily easy to discern the Republicans from the Democrats. The Democrats smiled more easily, the Republicans had tight mouths. My SO explained it to me. If you were a little kid lost in a mall, you would wind up going to a Democrat for help. At one table several Republicans said that they had hoity-toity relatives in Seattle. Lakoff talks about politics based on family structure. Here is another link -- these Republican siblings felt left behind.

Barbara Roberts, former governor of Oregon and an extraordinary woman

There's an article today in the Oregonian about Barbara Roberts and her autistic 48-year-old son written by Karen Briggs. The son, Mike Sanders, lives independently and has a job moving mail around the Mt. Hood Community College.

Barbara Sanders was 19 when he was born and she knew there was something wrong from the start. She could see that he was smart but he had some huge behavioral problems. He was kicked out of first grade for being too disabled. At that time mothers were blamed for autistic kids. She sent as a live-in student to the Parry Center for Children for three years, which he hated. When he was nine his school district got a grant to try to teach more disabled kids and she got him in that program. When the grant ran out she started worked on getting the state legislature to provide funding for educating disabled kids.

That was how she met her future husband, Frank Roberts, a college professor and state legislator. The legislation that they got passed was the first in the nation to put money and regulations in place to educate disabled children.

The last paragraph is particularly good:

When Mike Sanders talks about autism he usually explains how his mother's belief in him -- long before the experts offered hope -- helped him exceed everyone's expecations. "Science," he said, "finally caught up with my mother's intuition."

What a story. What a woman. I heard her talk at the 21st Century Democrats course this summer and was as impressed as always -- but I didn't know this backstory.

A Democratic Legislative District

This morning we went to a neighboring legislative district for their legislative send-off breakfast. Their Democratic state representatives and state senator answered questions about the upcoming session. On a clear day in Washington, on the sixth floor of a public building, we basked in the aura of elected officials talking about education being the first priority for the state. Oh yes, I am such a Democrat.

We haven't had a Democratic legislature here in Washington since 1994, two years before I moved into the state. The last four years have been a tie in the Senate so not much has moved forward. I came from Oregon as another refugee from the dying educational system and our Bill Sizemore's, California Proposition 13th's, induced cry of "no more taxes." Since my son was born, the schools in Oregon have made do with less money each year. They are gutted, dead, buried. Others moved here as well and we had our old Bill Sizemore, named Tim Eyman, whose initiative to cap taxes has now provoked crises in our cities and counties. Eyman has withdrawn in scandal, but his lawyer has just been elected to the state supreme court. Our state legislature provides funds for several counties in Eastern Washington because they can't raise taxes and can't afford to govern themselves. As an additional irony, these are Republican counties that fully support "no new taxes." We're supporting Republican counties instead of higher education for our state.

In the United States the blue states subsidize the red states -- who cry "no new taxes," who are afraid of terrorism that will be happening in the blue states. That's where we are in Washington, too. The Republicans who say they are self-sufficient and fiscally conservative aren't and are subsidized by the rest of us.

Dino Rossi "elected" Buzzflash hypocrite of the week

it's a full vote count that brings us to this week's BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite: the loser of the Washington State Governor's race, Dino Rossi. Mr. Rossi is challenging the winner, Democrat Christine (greg-whar) Gregoire, to hold the election over. Did we forget to mention that the Republican Secretary of State certified Gregoire as the next governor of Washington?

As a columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer observed, "Republican leaders have to know their shifting positions for a new election plays like a klutzy ballerina with vertigo on a newly waxed floor."

You see Gregoire won after a court-ordered hand recount, the kind Al Gore never got in Florida because of the Supreme Court coup. And because she won by only 129 votes, the Republicans are screaming bloody murder.

George W. Bush was only ahead a couple of hundred votes in Florida and falling behind fast when Antonin Scalia pulled the plug on a recount because it appeared almost certain Bush was going to lose Florida in 2000. And remember, Al Gore won the 2000 election by more than a half a million votes nationally.

Yet, in Washington State, the GOP, no doubt prodded on by the White House, is threatening lawsuits and anything they can muster to keep Gregoire, the candidate certified by the GOP Secretary of State, from taking office.

I appreciate the bravery shown by Barbara Boxer and Stephanie Tubb Jones in standing before Congress and insisting that this time, in this election, we will take a look at voter suppression in America. The insults to our voting system in Ohio, which Representative Conyers has documented, need to be rectified. The partisan treatment of elections in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 need to be remedied. Voting is a public trust and these Congresswomen have stood up for it integrity.

Republican leadership has stood in the way of meaningful election reform for years -- especially for having a paper audit trail on electronic voting machines. Yesterday I saw their ad hominem attacks instead of their consideration of the issues before them. I would like to see Republican representatives stand up and be counted for voting rights the way Democrats were.

But we won't see that because whereas Democrats want to count every vote, Republicans want to suppress votes and look for fraud. They have a win at any cost mentality. Bob Herbert said today that they have Iokiyar -- It's okay if you're a Republican.

Alberto Gonzales is a bad candidate for Attorney General

Choosing Gonzales lets the world know that the United States thinks torture is okay. His interview in Congress was a maze of avoiding questions.

[He] equivocated astonishingly when asked whether American soldiers or intelligence agents could "legally engage in torture under any circumstances."

"I don't believe so, but I'd want to get back to you on that and make sure I don't provide a misleading answer," said Mr. Gonzales, who went through many hours of preparation for these very questions.

Blaming a faulty memory, Mr. Gonzales would not provide anything close to a clear account of his role in the formulation of the policy on the treatment of prisoners. At one point, he said the 2002 memo was just the opinion of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Then he called it the "binding interpretation" of anti-torture statutes and treaties. Later, Mr. Gonzales called it "an arguable interpretation of the law."

Lautenberg Announces Measure to Prevent Partisan Activity by Election Officials

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) sponsors a bill that says that Secretaries of State cannot run partisan campaigns. That would take care of Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell.

Salon.com News | Fox News gets blown away:

Fox is shown up when world wide news is needed, such as the tsunami coverage. They are paying their money for Hannity and O'Reilley, not for news reporters -- and it shows.

As the Financial Times noted this week, "While CNN, the only U.S. news network with a strong global presence, was able to mobilize its correspondents in the region and fly in big-name reinforcements, Fox had to rely on untested freelancers, some of whom appeared to have never stood in front of a television camera before."

If the Republican National Committee doesn't have an angle on the story, then neither, apparently, does Fox News. And the last time we checked, there were no GOP talking points on natural disasters of biblical proportions. "

Two things have become obvious to news consumers in the aftermath of the tsunami. The first is that even when faced with covering a global humanitarian crisis, Fox News is incapable of turning off its robotic partisanship, not to mention its ever-present sense of victimization. Secondly, Fox News can barely call itself a serious news-gathering operation.

mandeep.org

We'll match you to a country that better suits you.

Progressive Happy Hour

Gmail - Progress Report: President Shills For Insurance Industry

SOCIAL SECURITY – WHITE HOUSE MEMO DETAILS RESOLVE TO CUT BENEFITS: A private White House memo sent Monday to top conservative allies seeks "to avert a split in Republican ranks" by taking sides in a growing conservative fissure over whether Social Security privatization plans should include drastic cuts in benefits for future retirees. The memo says President Bush will push ahead with his plan to cut benefits, and claims the plan's success would be "one of the most significant conservative governing achievements ever." Still, after Senate Republicans reported being "scared to death" of the political fallout of privatization plans during a private retreat yesterday, the White House responded by "emphasizing the importance of unifying behind whatever plan has the best chance of being signed into law." In other words," American Prospect fellow Matthew Yglesias writes, the White House doesn't mind what passes "as long as they can replace Social Security with something else. Anything else."

Stop Cuts to Social Security Benefits
(Moving Ideas)

If the Bush plan were enacted, spouses, disabled workers, and others would have to rely only on severely cut Social Security benefits. Workers would be expected to make up the difference in cuts through private account earnings which are risky because they are subject to the highs and lows of the stock market. Experts estimate that workers will only be able to recoup part of what they will lose in benefits.

Is CNN having a change of heart? Not emulating FOX?

CNN's U.S. Chief Executive Jonathan Klein did not renew Tucker Carlson's Crossfire contract. Tucker has now been hired by MSNBC to replace Deborah Norville.

Klein responded to this fight between Carlson and Stewart on Crossfire last fall by stating to the Associated Press that he is "firmly in the Jon Stewart camp."

Continuing the argument made by Stewart, Klein said there is too much arguing over political issues on all of the cable networks, including CNN, and that he wants better, more compelling programming to replace what has become the norm for political news.

CNN/U.S. President Jonathan Klein sided yesterday with comedian Jon Stewart, who used a "Crossfire" appearance last fall to rip the program as partisan hackery. "I think he made a good point about the noise level of these types of shows, which does nothing to illuminate the issues of the day," Klein said in an interview. Viewers need "useful" information in a dangerous world, he said, "and a bunch of guys screaming at each other simply doesn't accomplish that."

"I doubt that when the president sits down with his advisers they scream at him to bring him up to date on all of the issues," Klein exclaimed. "I don't know why we don't treat the audience with the same respect."

Are we going to have some news programs that not propaganda? It seemed like CNN was following FOX's lead -- so even though they were not headed by Republicans they were acting like Republicans. Are they going to start practicing responsible journalism again?

In another story I read today that FOX's ratings are sinking, sinking, sinking. What saves their ratings are the sports programs.

You can call your cable provider or satellite company and ask them to specifically block FOX channels from your cable. This is a campaign that will have some effects on their advertising revenues.
Comcast: 1-800-266-2278
Adelphia: 1-888-683-1000
Time Warner: 1-800-638-2882

We Are All Torturers Now

When Alberto Gonzales takes his seat before the Senate Judiciary Committee today for hearings to confirm whether he will become attorney general of the United States, Americans will bid farewell to that comforting story line. The senators are likely to give full legitimacy to a path that the Bush administration set the country on more than three years ago, a path that has transformed the United States from a country that condemned torture and forbade its use to one that practices torture routinely. Through a process of redefinition largely overseen by Mr. Gonzales himself, a practice that was once a clear and abhorrent violation of the law has become in effect the law of the land.

How responsible are we for the actions of our country? I feel the guilt of having my country kill tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis already. How will we feel when we add practicing torture to that?